


shards of ice.

by likeabomb



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Invasion! Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe), Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 00:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16650403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeabomb/pseuds/likeabomb
Summary: After Ray tells Barry that Len is no longer part of the Legends, he seeks out Mick to try to find some closure in all that's happened.





	shards of ice.

“Rory.”  
  
“Mm,” Mick grunts, looking up from the third glance over of his heat gun.

“Do you… Did you have time to talk?”  
  
Barry takes a few steps closer, like he’d come jogging over. His brows are tight and his expression solemn. Mick squints a little, looking back down at the gun in his hands.   
  
“Depends.”   
  
“Depends? Depends on what exactly?” Barry asks, glancing around himself like he might find some source of a pressing matter- other than the one they can’t quite tackle right now.

“Depends on if the aliens are gonna sit around with their thumbs up their asses or not.”  
  
“Well, I mean, we have to be sure we’re ready, and they still haven’t made any offensive moves.”   
  
Mick looks up, eyes set on Barry, hard enough they make him squirm a little. He tries not to show it. Normally he has enough of a backbone not to cave under someone just looking at him, but right now… he finds himself a little more vulnerable. Speedsters and metas and even Oliver sometimes, they’ve got nothing on Mick in this moment. And he doesn’t think Mick even realizes.

“Well,” Mick starts, tone a little mocking as he pops some of the gun apart to peer inside the pieces to make sure they’re clean, “Guess we got time then, since it doesn’t look like we’re doin’ much around here anyway.”

Barry studies him for a few long moments. He can tell Mick is looking at the gun so closely and so often, not because he wants to be sure it works, but because he doesn’t have much of anything else to do and he wants to make himself look busy. They put training against Supergirl on hold for a lunch break, but even then, the rest of the Legends… they don’t interact with Mick the way they interact with each other. Or with the new acquaintances. Everyone seems to be getting along- mostly- except for Mick. There haven’t been any outright fights, but he seems…

He seems an outcast on his own team.

With what Barry knows about him, his life before the Legends, and the loose grasp he has on people as a concept, Mick doesn’t fit in. It’s obvious, but the rest of the Legends don’t regard him the same way they do the others on their team. Including Sara, and she’s a known assassin. He seemed more relaxed, more at ease, with Len around. Without him, Mick seems… reserved. It seems an awful lot like standoffish and ‘don’t fuck with me’, but Barry knows that look. He’s lonely.

_“I forgot that we never told you.”_

Were Snart and Rory really thought of so poorly on the team that Len’s death meant this little? That it had been forgotten?

Why did they stay?

Why was _Mick_ still working with them after losing Len?

None of it made sense. Barry just couldn’t wrap his head around all of it. Not Mick staying, and certainly not how it seemed the team had so little respect for the two of them.

Sure, they were thieves, and in the past, killers. An arsonist and a mastermind. Plans, precise and executed with deadly accuracy. Barry had more than once come to Len for help cracking a problem open. Partners in crime, through thick and thin. Barry had seen it so many times. But he couldn’t imagine that it was their crimes that had really kept the team from seeing them as equals. Barry saw them as equals! It… was a difficult dynamic to describe, sure, but the night Barry had asked Len not to kill anyone, he hadn’t ever again. They respected each other, and had fun with their crafts.

“You gonna stand there and stare all day?” Mick’s voice draws him back to reality with a hard jolt.

“Sorry- sorry, Mick. I was just thinking.”

His face hardens a little, wariness clear in his eyes. Maybe first names were a little too personal. “Was this the time waster? You’re doin’ a good job,” Mick drones, unamused by Barry’s apparent airheadedness.

“Does your team respect you, Mick?” Barry spits it out before he loses his nerve. It’s out now, and he can’t take it back.  
  
Mick gives him a look, one that only taps the surface of how tired he really is, Barry can see that now. He looks exhausted, fed up, like he’s ready to crawl into bed and not come up for air. But it’s all under this thick layer of apathy and tough guy bravado. Barry can’t think there really isn’t something good in him, just like he knew there was good in Len.

He grunts noncommittally and goes back to tampering with his gun.

“Don’t need ‘em to,” Mick answers, eventually.

“What are you talking about?”  
  
“Don’t need ‘em to respect me. I’m not here to be their pal,” Mick explains, letting his arms fall to his sides. His hand squeezes and relaxes on the handle of his gun.   
  
“Then….” Barry sounds genuinely baffled, “why _are_ you here?”   
  
Drawing a slow and even breath, Mick holsters his gun, finally, tugging at his gloves a little.   
  
“I was brought onto that ship as a package deal. He was the brains, I was the brawn. He made the plans, and I lit shit on fire.” He stops, just staring at Barry for what feels like forever, then continues, “I can still light shit on fire without him.”

“You- let me get this straight- you think your worth to the team is the fact you have a flamethrower?”  
  
“Heat gun,” Mick corrects him.  
  
“Alright, heat gun,” Barry sighs, clearly more annoyed for the correction.  
  
“They don’t seem to think I’m good for much else, so why not lean into it?” Mick shrugs a shoulder, “I light things on fire, punch guys teeth in, and drink beer. They don’t ask me to do anything else, and I don’t _do_ anything else. Seems like a sweet gig to me.”

“But...what do you get out of this?”  
  
Mick takes a moment to think about it, eyes a little distant before he answers, “Got to fight some ninjas. That was awesome.”

“Seriously? Like, real life ninjas?” Barry chirps in disbelief.  
  
The way he wrinkles his nose and nods smuggly, a grin playing over his lips makes Barry think that maybe his life with the Legends isn’t so bad. Ninjas are pretty cool.

“And you’re alright doing this gig without Snart?” Barry asks, and he hates having to bring it back around to that. He still can’t believe it himself, but he needs to know things are okay.

“Like I said, Streak, I don’t need Snart to know how to light shit on fire or punch somebody’s lights out.”

“Don’t you miss him?”

Mick stares, a darkness creeping into his expression the longer Barry stands still in front of him, letting the question hang in the air between them. His jaw twitches minutely and Barry realizes very acutely that he fucked up.

“He made his choices.”

The words are nearly as cold as Snart himself, and they feel like a bullet to the gut. He feels like the wind has been knocked out of him and all he can do is stare at Mick in disbelief, searching his face for some telltale sign that he’s hurt by losing Len, some showing that he hurts like Barry hurts. He expects grief, loss, he expects _something_!

Barry hadn’t known them for very long, and their deal had been a strange one to pin down, of course. But they weren’t harmful, not to the people. The corporations were another story, but it was the people of Central that were his concern, and they had been Len’s concern too. Central was _his_ city, as he so proclaimed often enough. It was always a battle of wits and resources on a scale most people couldn’t understand, it seemed childish, selfish. These two were thieves! He shouldn’t be praising them for their prowess, or smiling when he ends up on the scene of their crimes. But it was different with them than with anyone else he dealt with. Ethics and honor and a code, they were so much more _human_ than the rest of the things Barry faced down and it really made him respect them _as_ people.

So finding out that Len is dead, through sacrifice to save the others no less, feels like ice creeping through him. Fitting, really.

But seeing Mick’s expression so unaffected feels even worse somehow. They’d been partners since they were kids, Barry thought. How could Mick just push the memory of Len and all they’d done off like this?

Unless…

Unless he wasn’t. And he was just this damn good at hiding it. Mick wasn’t a feelings kind of guy. To be fair, Len had never seemed the type either. Stoic and calculating and with that distinct badass attitude. They didn’t have feelings and didn’t have friends. Other than each other, of course. And the quiet and measured anger in the way Mick looks at him and says what he does, Barry knows he’s affected. There’s no way he’s not.

“It’s alright if you do, Mick. He was your partner,” Barry tries for reassuring.

Quick as anything, Mick has hands wrapped in the front of his shirt, a snarl on his lips.

“You don’t get to tell me how to feel, Allen.”  
  
Barry’s hands settle on Mick’s in his shirt. He can feel how his heart races. How angry he is. The slight tremor in his grip.

Slowly, he nods and Mick lets go of him with a shove. Mick half turns away, scoffing a sound. He does a full turn, almost like he’s going to walk away, but he stops, and faces Barry again.

“You’re not my shrink, and you’re not my friend. You better remember that.”

The pain in his eyes and the animalistic way he snarls at Barry to prove his point and try to drive home that there’s nothing there for anyone to salvage in terms of Len only make Barry’s shoulders slump a little. He’s right. Barry isn’t his therapist. But he had hope that maybe talking about it would bring some closure for both of them. It’s selfish on Barry’s part, sure, considering he had hardly known Len in comparison, but he still feels like something big and important is missing from his life now. He can’t imagine how Mick _really_ feels.

Mick walks away and it leaves Barry feeling hollow. Ducking his head to rub at his mouth and jaw, he turns to head back to the teams gathered and see if he can’t rope people back into getting back to training. The invasion isn’t going to wait for them.


End file.
